Comic review: The Humans #1- From the back-pages of a very old school book

Writer: Keenan Marshal Keller
Artist: Tom Neely
Publisher: Image Comics
Released: 5th November 2014

How do you rate a comic book that is deliberately trying to be silly, childish, dated, irrelevant, amateurish, and just very, very stupid? After all, when those objectives are achieved doesn’t that make it the perfect book?

Deliberately bad art?

Writer Keenan Marshal has done exactly what he intended to do here, so all criticisms are kind of pointless. It would be like criticising a Jackson Pollock painting as a load of silly squirts and squiggles haphazardly thrown onto a canvas by a raging drunk. Err yes, that’s exactly what it is. That’s what’s it’s supposed to be. It’s a big drunken mess, and therefore, it’s art.

How then to review a comic book about a 1970’s monkey biker gang? A comic book where the art is basic, amateurish, like it was put together by a fourteen year old boy, but then again it’s perfect for the book because the entire story also reads like it was put together by a fourteen year old boy, well a fourteen year old boy living out a beer, fights, girls and motorbike gang fantasy in the 1970’s.

The narrative content is funeral of deceased gang member; a fight with a rival gang and a closing revelation designed to hook us into buying the next issue.  There are no zombies yet, but give it time. A couple of the characters are introduced. They read like something a kid would dream up in the back of his maths book. That’s not a criticism, as that’s what writer Keenan Marshall is going for. The question then, why?

It's all very school-boy

I’m not sure why. Is it a nostalgia thing for a childhood of drawing monkey biker gangs back at school in the 1970’s? Probably, so does it work? I’m a 1980’s school-kid, all grown up, and still reading comics, for some reason, and I can see one of my old schoolmates putting together this comic after watching the planet of the apes and a 70’s biker/drugs movie. They would think it was all very adult and cool. I would just think it was a bit silly.

I don’t really understand who the audience for this book is supposed to be? Is it guys over the age of fifty who want a bit of schoolboy nostalgia, perhaps? Could it be the dreaded ‘hipster’ who is into ‘retro’ 1970’s stuff in a Quentin Tarantino way? I guess so. Is that a big audience in 2014?

I read the book in five minutes, had a bit of a laugh at how deliberately stupid it all was, and that’s it for me. I’m not going to keep on reading. Why should I? It’s just a case of, oh so that was daft then, next. No deeper thoughts come to mind. It’s a stupid book, but it’s supposed to be a stupid book. Do you want to read a deliberately stupid retro book for hipsters? If so, this will be something you’ll want to check out. For the rest of us however, it offers a momentary giggle, and no reason to buy issue #2.

Rating: 6/10 (for the laugh factor)